Freshfields’ US growth ambitions has forced out equity partners across London, Paris and Germany, the Financial Times reported on 13 July, weeks after a pay overhaul left dozens of its roughly 500 partners holding fewer equity points.
Freshfields reset its internal exchange rate from $1.60 to the pound down to about $1.30, then handed extra points to its top US earners so their dollar pay held. Points are a share of a fixed pool and Freshfields’ European partners are the pool.
The Financial Times reported this week that Freshfields has culled equity partners in recent weeks, with its London headquarters and its Paris and German offices all seeing exits and equity downgrades.
City AM ran it as a shake-up to fund the American push, which it is. What neither write-up reached is the ledger entry that explains it, and that ledger entry has been sitting in public since March.
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